Building the People’s Voting System

Author: John Sebes

Tales from Real Life: Accessibility

Possible futures of election technology … something you read about here a good deal. For some contrast, I want to offer some pointers to real people telling real stories about how real voting systems work today. And I don’t mean the horror stories about voting machine breakdowns and security problems. These stories are from people … Continued

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Banned in Germany, Part 2

In a recent post, I gave my view of a recent German High Court ruling that involved election technology.  It seems I may have confused some readers by talking about what was, in some sense, the side effect.  So, I should say a bit more about the main point. Throwing out a recent election was … Continued

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Gold or Pyrite?

In a couple of prior posts, I explained the “gold copy” or “trusted build” concept, and the role of EAC, NIST, and test labs. I can’t seem to completely bury this tale, because it raised another question about the processing of checking a voting system to see if it is legit: “Why is this checking … Continued

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Voting Machine Monopoly?

It looks like the largest U.S. voting system company will acquire the second-largest, creating a potential monopolist controlling about three quarters of the market nationally, and 100% in some regions. I could explain why that might seem like a bad idea to many people, but the New York Times’ The Business of Voting Machines already … Continued

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Electronic Voting Banned in Germany

Earlier this year, there was an important legal dispute in Germany, about whether electronic voting machines were legal for use in German government elections. The dispute was decided by the German Constitutional Court (similar to the U.S. Supreme Court), and the short answer was “no.” Now, we have available an official English translation of the … Continued

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“I Have a Dream” too

Last Friday was the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech in Washington, DC., where so many of us remember him saying “I have a dream.” The anniversary caught me by surprise when I noted it in the news, and tugged at me all day: what could Dr. King’s words have to say about … Continued

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Identifying the Gold, Redux

I recently commented on specific connection, in the case of the TrustTheVote project, of open source methods and the issue of identifying a “gold build” of a certified voting system. As a reminder to more recent readers, most states have laws that require election officials to use only those specific voting system products that were … Continued

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Open and Secret?

Scanning the news last week, I found rumors of Premier Systems (the voting system vendor formerly known ad Diebold) going open-source, and of the Federal government pondering cases where voting system test results should be confidential. An interesting juxtaposition! The first item I call a rumor not because I disbelieve the blogger in question, but … Continued

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More Twisted Logic: How Voting Machines Eat Pretzels

In a recent posting, I tried to give a flavor of the pretzel logic that derives from the crazy quilt of state-specific rules for counting ballots — with a particularly notorious case from straight-party voting. The next question is, given this crazy quilt, what is a voting system supposed to do? Before answering that today, … Continued

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